[RESOLVED] Problem with disappearing text, and tabbing over

juniper747

I have a form with multiple text entry fields. Some are input fields, and one is a textarea. I have the script (below) for a textarea in a form, to ensure that there is a max of 1500 characters. I am having two problems.

1) If there is an error on the form (for whatever reason), all of the text that was entered in the texarea, gets lost when the page reloads (this only happens for the textarea, the other input fields reprint the text).

2) When ever I try to press the "Tab" button on my keyboard, to tab out of the textarea to the next text box, it does not tab to the "next" text box, but instead it tabs "back" to the previous text box in the form.

Here's what I have:

<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
	function ismaxlength(obj){
		var mlength=obj.getAttribute? parseInt(obj.getAttribute("maxlength")) : ""
		if (obj.getAttribute && obj.value.length>mlength)
			obj.value=obj.value.substring(0,mlength)
	}
</script>
</head>

<form>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><textarea maxlength="1500" onkeyup="return ismaxlength(this)" 
name="blah_post" tabindex="1" style="display: block; width: 340px; height: 150px;" 
cols="60" rows="10" value="<?php print $blah_post;?>"></textarea></td>          

</tr>
</form>

Don't remember where I found the script but, I'm open to more simpler javascript suggestions as well....

johanafm

If you validated your html code, you'd realize that textareas don't have a value attribute.
Check the tabindex attributes of the form elements in question, either by inspecting the html source, or preferably by using a DOM inspector such as Firebug for Firefox.

juniper747

Thanks very much for the constructive criticism... I cleaned it up as you asked. Also I removed the tabindex="1" attribute, which was causing my my tabbing issue.

I'm still having my initial problem: if I type in a bunch of text in the text area, it all gets erased if there is an error on the page (an error meaning, user forgot to put in his birthday for example)... How can I echo back the text in the field, in the case of an error.

Thanks for your help!

bradgrafelman

What does your code look like now?

juniper747

This is what I have now:

The script:

<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
	function ismaxlength(obj, mlength){
		if (obj.getAttribute && obj.value.length>mlength)
			obj.value=obj.value.substring(0,mlength)
	}
</script>
</head>

In the form I have:

<tr>
<td colspan="2"><textarea id="text-area" onkeyup="return ismaxlength(this, 1500)" name="post" cols="60" rows="10"></textarea></td>          

</tr>

Any suggestions?

bradgrafelman

What happened to the PHP code that was echo'ing out the previous value? If you never output the data, then of course it won't appear again on the next page load.

juniper747

Ok, even if I add the php print like so:

<tr>
<td colspan="2"><textarea id="text-area" onkeyup="return ismaxlength(this, 1500)" name="blah_post" value="<?php print $blah_post;?>" cols="60" rows="10"></textarea></td>          

</tr>

It still clears the field out whenever there is an error (for example, if user didnt enter his birthday)...

bradgrafelman

As johanafm said above, <textarea> elements don't have a "value" attribute. If you want to define an initial value, that data should go between the opening and closing tags of the element.

juniper747

Ohhhhhh... gosh I feel dumb. Ok, I changed it to this:

<tr>
<td colspan="2"><textarea id="text-area" onkeyup="return ismaxlength(this, 1500)" name="blah_post" cols="60" rows="10"> <?php print $blah_post;?> </textarea></td>          

</tr>

And it worked! Thanks guys...

bradgrafelman

Don't forget, when printing user-defined data into HTML you need to sanitize the data to prevent it from interfering with the rest of the page. One way of doing this would be to use [man]htmlentities/man.

juniper747

bradgrafelman;10979605 wrote:
Don't forget, when printing user-defined data into HTML you need to sanitize the data to prevent it from interfering with the rest of the page. One way of doing this would be to use [man]htmlentities/man.

As for sanitizing, this is what I am doing (so far):

$blob = stripslashes($blob);
//$contacts = stripslashes($contacts);

$blob = strip_tags($blob);
//$contacts = strip_tags($contacts);

$blob = mysql_real_escape_string($blob);
//$contacts = mysql_real_escape_string($contacts);

I commented out the $contacts, since as you know from my other post, the $contacts are part of an array ($contacts[0]...$contacts[3]), and so it was giving me errors... How do you recommend I sanitize the array? Also note that my contacts, are actually supposed to be email addresses. Any special way to sanitize those?

I will look into adding [man]htmlentities/man as well...

bradgrafelman

Why do you use [man]stripslashes/man? (In other words: you shouldn't be using stripslashes().)

juniper747 wrote:
How do you recommend I sanitize the array?

Same way you'd sanitize any other variable, only take that method and do it iteratively over the entire array. Something like [man]array_walk/man comes to mind.

juniper747 wrote:
Also note that my contacts, are actually supposed to be email addresses. Any special way to sanitize those?

Aye, I'd take a look at the [man]filter_var/man function, specifically the FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL flag/option.